INTERVIEWS

Trish Richardson, MSN, BSBA, RN, NE-BC, CMSRN, Director of Post-Acute Care Solutions at Relias, a healthcare training and performance solutions company, discusses the recently announced nursing home reforms and steps that nurses and post-acute care facilities can take to address some of the new requirements around nurse competencies and the intensified scrutiny around issues such as abuse or neglect, infection control and other care quality issues such as falls and pressure injuries. She talks about how facilities can enhance their skill competencies for clinicians, including improving their procedures to define and record competence so that they can readily provide the information in a survey or audit. 

Michael Irizarry, MD, MPH, Senior Vice President, Clinical Research and Deputy Chief Clinical Officer of the Neurology Business Group at Eisai Inc. discusses the latest data presented at AD/PD™ 2022 from the Phase 2b study on lecanemab in the treatment of early Alzheimer’s disease.

Rajasi Mills, VP of Sleep IQ Health at Sleep Number, the smart bed company committed to advancing sleep health and connecting the dots between quality sleep and positive health outcomes, discusses the science and innovation behind sleep. She talks about the data being collected using Sleep Number’s SleepIQ ® technology embedded in every smart bed, the research being presented at medical meetings, and the key partnerships and research collaborations they have formed. 

Suneet Grewal, MD, a rheumatologist at East Bay Rheumatology Medical Group in the Bay Area discusses the supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) to expand the label KRYSTEXXA (pegloticase) plus methotrexate to treat uncontrolled gout and how this offers patients a substantially better chance of responding to therapy. The sBLA is based on the MIRROR randomized controlled trial (“Methotrexate to Increase Response Rates in Patients with Uncontrolled Gout Receiving KRYSTEXXA”) 

Robert Hummel, Chief Operating Officer at Suvoda, a global clinical trial technology company, discusses the rise in trial complexity, how the focus has shifted to implementing more patient-centric trials, and why selecting the right technology partner to manage the patient journey to eliminate costly trial delays is becoming increasingly crucial. 

Eric Brouwer, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer at SQI Diagnostics, a company focused on the science of lung health, discusses the development and manufacture of respiratory health and precision medicine tests. Their tests simplify and improve COVID-19 mobile PCR, Point of Care antigen testing and antibody monitoring, Rapid Acute Lung Injury testing, donor organ transplant informatics, and immunological protein and antibody testing. 

Returning guest, Dr. Jeffrey Dlott, Medical Director at Quest Direct discusses the new “Future of Personalized Healthcare Insights Study 2022” that was conducted by Leaf Group in collaboration  with Quest Direct and Well+Good.    The study provides a deeper understanding of perceptions and preferences around telehealth, health data usage, and tech adoption, as well as ways to improve a patient’s healthcare journey. 

Dr. Mark Berman, Chief Medical Officer of Better Therapeutics discusses how prescription digital therapeutics (PDTs) could reimagine how we treat type 2 diabetes and how our current system of treatment doesn’t work for more than half of patients. While standard of care focuses on treating symptoms, PDTs can enable physicians to focus treatment on behaviors that lead to the disease of type 2 diabetes. He talks about the company’s type 2 diabetes PDT candidate BT-001 and its recent positive primary endpoint data readout, physicians’ support of BT-001 to date, and its pathway to De Novo clearance. 

Tony Mack, Chairman and CEO of Virpax Pharma, discusses a new drug candidate in the pipeline  that uses the Intranasal MET-nanoparticle dispersion delivery  technology, called AnQlar™,  a prophylactic, antiviral product candidate formulated to prevent the spread of respiratory infections like influenza, SARS-CoV-2, and rhinovirus. If clinical studies prove AnQlar is safe and effective, the company envisions the product to be used broadly, possibly as an OTC product, and by essential workers, high-risk individuals, and others entering close spaces. In addition, preclinical animal studies demonstrated no viral brain load in animal brain tissue, an important observation as recent studies have shown neurological conditions with survivors of COVID (Long-COVID). 

Andy Panos, President of U.S. Telehealth at UpHealth and founder of ​Martti™ by UpHealth, a telehealth platform that includes language access discusses how language barriers affect patient care and hospital stress, the importance of providing interpreters in a compassionate health care environment, and the invaluable work medical interpreters play in curbing misinformation.